Entries for Joshua Ross

C9 Guy [C9 Guy]

Joshua Ross — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:10:08 GMT

On the little C9 guy on the end of the new videos, why is the bluetooth ear piece drawn on the XY plane? Shouldn't it be on the ZY?

in reply to C9 Guy

Algorithm Help [Algorithm Help]

Joshua Ross — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:26:34 GMT

I was looking for an algorithm that would order a finite sequence based upon a set of historical sequences. Say if I were a salesperson calling on a customer and that customer had 100 products that I would service. I would like to order my list of 100 items, using the order in which I placed the previous orders. Not all products would be ordered every day, in fact, the average order may only contain 20 items.

Does anyone have an idea how to do this?

in reply to Algorithm Help

Outer Joins in Linq [Outer Joins in Linq]

Joshua Ross — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:16:14 GMT

Does anyone know why outer joins in linq are so crazy?

Example:

Dim z = From c In db.Customers
Group Join o In db.Orders
On c.CustID Equals o.CustID
Into j
From jo In j.DefaultIfEmpty()
Select New With {c, jo}

There has to be a good story behind this.

in reply to Outer Joins in Linq

OMG ... Win 7 = Such a Piece of Cake [OMG ... Win 7 = Such a Piece of Cake]

Joshua Ross — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:49:41 GMT

I'm disgusted by the title of the other thread on this forum and I thought that I would create another, more positive thread to replace it.

Cheers

-Josh

in reply to OMG ... Win 7 = Such a Piece of Cake

Microsoft Certified Master [ Microsoft Certified Master]

Joshua Ross — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:53:25 GMT

I was looking at the certifications list the other day and I noticed the Microsoft Certified Master program. Just out of curiosity, are there any MCMs hanging out in the Coffeehouse?

If not, I'm sure the rest of you would like to see a Japanese guy try to take a bite out of a seven layer burger, at a Windows 7 party.

in reply to Microsoft Certified Master

Feature Request for Office / Visual Studio [Feature Request for Office / Visual Studio]

Joshua Ross — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:57:17 GMT

I would like to see a feature, named "You Stupid F _ _ _." When prompted to save a document / project and you say no. Windows will automatically save it anyways, in a temporary folder. The longer you work on it, the longer it stays in the folder. If you are working on it for a few minutes it will stay there for a day. If you spent more time on it, perhaps it could persist for a week or two. What do you think?

EDIT: Proving that great minds think alike, Kettch posted that Office 2010 has this feature already.

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Selecting a computer based upon the windows performance index [Selecting a computer based upon the windows performance index]

Joshua Ross — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:23:04 GMT

I was looking for a new computer and I decided to compare machines, using the windows performance index. Is there a site that keeps track of the different ratings for popular computer brands? Or do I just have to run the tests myself and see what I get? While looking at some on the computers at a big box store, I noticed that the feature was disabled on most of the machines, based on a lock-down policy. If they lock-down that feature, how is a consumer supposed to make an unbiased decision? It would be great to rate the computers on a price per performance scale.

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Microsoft Press Enters Strategic Alliance with O'Reilly [Microsoft Press Enters Strategic Alliance with O'Reilly]

Joshua Ross — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:44:15 GMT

Microsoft Press Enters Strategic Alliance with O'Reilly. This has some potential to be really cool. Tim and company puts out good product and many of his books can be found in my home and workplace. Although I have not subscribed to Safari, I might now.

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Oh My God [Oh My God]

Joshua Ross — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:30:34 GMT

In the name that is anything sacred, I hope this was not produced by Microsoft. Who ever it is, they giving astroturf a bad rap. I find it mystifying how one can market a product that negates obtrusiveness. I would image the best OS would be the one you didn't know was there. And I must say Windows7 is rather near that ideal. In fact, I can say that I have not squandered any time at all with it. I haven't had to doodle around with configuration settings, search for working drivers, play with the registry, or defragment the hard drive. If Security Essentials was included, I would say that nirvana could be found.

in reply to Oh My God

Codeplex Projects [Codeplex Projects]

Joshua Ross — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:55:44 GMT

Has anyone posted something on CodePlex and received any helpful input? I posted a VSTO add-in for excel 2007, that facilitates data exchange between sql and excel. I think most of the downloads were people clicking on the wrong thing.

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IE8 Immune to Rails Bug [IE8 Immune to Rails Bug]

Joshua Ross — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:34:26 GMT

As much as the marketing department, and much of the C9 peanut gallery, loves to pump and dump IE. It is good to see some real world impact made by the hardening of IE8. In this article on Arstechnica, they cite the XSS filter blocking a vulnerability surfaced in the Ruby on Rails framework.

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Who's better now? [Who's better now?]

Joshua Ross — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:34:26 GMT

I've been thinking about the software that I have composed recently. Many aspects of the code have been positively influenced by the videos posted here on C9. I'm not sure how much praise you folks get, but it's surely not enough.

I thought that I'd take a moment and thank the all the people here that have made these last few years so enriching. So, feel free to pat yourselves on the back today and think of something intriguing to share for tomorrow, eager minds await.

-Josh

in reply to Who's better now?

Hiding User Stats [Hiding User Stats ]

Joshua Ross — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:36:53 GMT

I was browsing though the user pages and I noticed that brian.shapiro seemed to be the only niner without user stats. Is there an op-out or is this a bug? I tried to find another niner with a dot in the name without much luck.

EDIT: ray7 doesn't have any stats either. Perhaps this happens when the user has nothing to say about themselves. And, Ckurt doesn't even have a page.

-Josh

in reply to Hiding User Stats

Expression Encoder 3 Screen Capture [Expression Encoder 3 Screen Capture]

Joshua Ross — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:15:06 GMT

After installing the Expression Studio 3, I noticed that it came with a screen recorder. This is one great little addition. If you haven't tried using it yet, I highly recommed giving it a spin.

-Josh

in reply to Expression Encoder 3 Screen Capture

Office 2010 Feedback Mechanism [Office 2010 Feedback Mechanism]

Joshua Ross — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:56:56 GMT

I signed up for the Office 2010 preview, and was able to install it on a virtual machine to play around with it. While my experience has been rather blasé thus far, I really like the feedback mechanism incorporated to the system tray. There are two icons; a smiley face and a frowning face. If you click on either one it lets you share your feedback with a screen capture of the current screen.

I’m surprised how compelling this addition of a screen dump is to the generating feedback process. What else can be done to elicit higher quality feedback into a mass-market application development cycle? A/V capture, or user viewable usage heat maps?

-Josh

in reply to Office 2010 Feedback Mechanism

Humans prefer cockiness to expertise [Humans prefer cockiness to expertise ]

Joshua Ross — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:40:11 GMT

New Scientist has confirmed Humans prefer cockiness to expertise! I think that anyone who has spent enough time in the coffee house could have come to the same conclusion. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

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Interview Request [Interview Request]

Joshua Ross — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:45:12 GMT

I was wondering what Mark Hamburg has been doing since joining Microsoft. May I request that he be put on the "people to interview" list?

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Pitchman for Windows 7 [Pitchman for Windows 7]

Joshua Ross — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:37:22 GMT

If Microsoft was planning on using Billy Mays for selling Windows 7, they will have to find a new Pitchman. It looks like he died this morning. :(

in reply to Pitchman for Windows 7

Bill Gates Purchases Feynman Lectures [Bill Gates Purchases Feynman Lectures]

Joshua Ross — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:23:07 GMT

I ran into this story where Bill had purchased the rights to this series and made it avaible to the public. I hope that this is not a duplicate post.

in reply to Bill Gates Purchases Feynman Lectures

Last Viewed Position in Silverlight Videos ? [Last Viewed Position in Silverlight Videos ?]

Joshua Ross — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:18:53 GMT

I love the great videos are that available through this site. Recently my wife and I new'ed up a little girl. And she needs lots of attention. So, my baby monitoring thread is running on a much higher priority than my C9 watching thread and occasionally, I have to do a little preemptive multitasking.

When the C9 thread is backgrounded for a while, it crashes and loses its state. Would it be possible to store the last position viewed of the video somewhere on C9 and then be able to go back to where I was, at a later date?

EDIT: Perhaps this could be used in combination with the chaptering features. If the information was stored on the server, you guys could mine the start / stop times of the viewings to see what excites people and bores them without having to explicitly survey them.

Or should I put this one up at http://channel9.usertaskforce.com/ ?

-Josh

in reply to Last Viewed Position in Silverlight Videos ?

Yo SQL Guys! [Yo SQL Guys!]

Joshua Ross — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:49:13 GMT

Can someone explain why select isnumeric('951D00073') returns 1? I could see it for 951e+73, but the D notation is a strange thing to run accross.

in reply to Yo SQL Guys!

Surface SP1 [Surface SP1]

Joshua Ross — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:16:54 GMT

I ran into this cool overview of Surface SP1 and I thought I would share it.

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World of Goo addiction [World of Goo addiction]

Joshua Ross — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:08:50 GMT

I found this World of Goo game and spent way to much time in it. Anyone else here lose a few days to the World of Goo?

in reply to World of Goo addiction

Boy does Mappoint 2009 Suck [Boy does Mappoint 2009 Suck]

Joshua Ross — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:59:30 GMT

How could such a shoddy product get released? For a company that has been touting the virtue of good UX, I am amazed to see that such an abortion could find its way out of some toilet and on to store shelves without including a lengthy apology letter and perhaps some barbiturates. The letter would be very sincere and offer you the option of popping all the pills at once, which would effectively end the pain and suffering caused by the realization that you just exchanged your hard earned cash for an experience that could be arguably worse than taking a bath with tub girl. And that is just the UI.

If you have to program against the COM object, you might want to watch that two girls and a cup video first. It might give you strength in knowing that people can actually eat poop and enjoy it.

in reply to Boy does Mappoint 2009 Suck

Branch Cache [Branch Cache]

Joshua Ross — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:33:30 GMT

Has anyone got this to work in Windows 7 (7000)? I have it running in distributed mode and it does not seem to do anything. If I go into netsh it tells me that it is running and the 0 bytes of cache are used. I would have posted this in the newsgroups, if there was one for BranchCache.

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